What Dun & Bradstreet Does With Its Cash

In the quest to find great investments, most investors focus on earnings to gauge a company's financial strength. This is a good start, but earnings can be misleading and incomplete. To get a clearer understanding of a company's ability to earn money and reward you, the shareholder, it's often better to focus on cash flow. In this series, we tear apart a company's cash flow statement to see how much money is truly being earned, and more importantly, what management is doing with that cash.

The first step in analyzing cash flow is to look at net income. Dun & Bradstreet's net income over the last five years has been impressive:

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

Normalized Net Income

$253 million

$240 million

$281 million

$294 million

$271 million

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Next, we add back in a few non-cash expenses like the depreciation of assets, and adjust net income for changes in inventory, accounts receivable, and accounts payable -- changes in cash levels that reflect a company either paying its bills, or being paid by customers. This yields a figure called cash from operating activities -- the amount of cash a company generates from doing everyday business.

From there, we subtract capital expenditures, or the amount a company spends acquiring or fixing physical assets. This yields one version of a figure called free cash flow, or the true amount of cash a company has left over for its investors after doing business:

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

Free Cash Flow

$307 million

$310 million

$360 million

$425 million

$380 million

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Now we know how much cash Dun & Bradstreet is really pulling in each year. Next question: What is it doing with that cash?

There are two ways a company can use free cash flow to directly reward shareholders: dividends and share repurchases. Cash not returned to shareholders can be stashed in the bank, used to invest in other companies and assets, or to pay off debt.

Here's how much Dun & Bradstreet has returned to shareholders in recent years:

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

Dividends

$70 million

$70 million

$72 million

$66 million

$58 million

Share Repurchases

$185 million

$135 million

$226 million

$382 million

$409 million

Total Returned To Shareholders

$256 million

$205 million

$297 million

$448 million

$467 million

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

As you can see, the company has repurchased a decent amount of its own stock. That's caused shares outstanding to fall:

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

Shares Outstanding (millions)

49

50

52

54

58

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Now, companies tend to be fairly poor at repurchasing their own shares, buying feverishly when shares are expensive and backing away when they're cheap. Does Dun & Bradstreet fall into this trap? Let's take a look:

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Not bad. There is quarter-to-quarter volatility, but it appears that's due to a fall in free cash flow, not management emotions. That's what you want to see.

Finally, I like to look at how dividends have added to total shareholder returns:

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Shares returned -13% over the last five years, which increases to -5% with dividends reinvested -- a small boost to top off otherwise weak performance.

To gauge how well a company is doing, keep an eye on the cash. How much a company earns is not as important as how much cash is actually coming in the door, and how much cash is coming in the door isn't as important as what management actually does with that cash. Remember, you, the shareholder, own the company. Are you happy with the way management has used Dun & Bradstreet's cash? Sound off in the comment section below.